1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to firearms, including semi-automatic pistols and revolvers, which have a permanently mounted locking device in front of a trigger guard and under a barrel, whereby the locking device restricts the movement of a slide or a cylinder, thereby disabling the firearm.
2. Prior Art
Fear of accidental firings and particularly unauthorized use of firearms by students in school are growing in our society. There is a growing need for firearm locking devices. Many firearm locking devices have been proposed. However, there are few firearm locking devices which are really in use. There are two types of proposed firearm locking devices. One is a detachable firearm locking device. The other is an embedded firearm locking device.
A detachable firearm locking device is attached to a firearm only when it is used to secure a firearm. The most typical detachable firearm locking device is a trigger guard lock. U.S. Pat. No. 6,205,695 was issued to Schnell on Mar. 27, 2001. A detachable firearm locking device can be applied to current firearms without design change. However, it must be removed when a firearm is used. It is not a permanent component of a firearm. It must be detached and kept anywhere else while a firearm is used. Therefor, one can easily either forget to secure a firearm again or lose a trigger guard lock itself. Moreover, as stated above, the most typical detachable locking device is a trigger guard lock. It inherently requires access to a trigger. When you remove or install it, there is a certain risk that you might hit a trigger and fire accidentally if a gun is loaded. This risk is bigger than that of unauthorized use for many gun owners. A detachable firearm locking device rather inherently increases the potential risk of accidental firing. In order to avoid this risk, you need to keep a firearm unloaded whenever you lock a firearm. Therefor, you always need to load a firearm again whenever you unlock a firearm. This means that you cannot use a firearm as soon as possible after unlocking a firearm. You cannot keep a firearm standby position safely with a trigger guard lock.
An embedded firearm locking device is embedded in a body of a firearm such as a grip or a frame. Typical of an embedded firearm locking device is U.S. Pat. No. 5,743,039 issued to Garrett on Apr. 28, 1998. It is a permanent component of a firearm. You need not remove it when you use a firearm. There is no possibility of losing it while you are using a firearm except a key. If a combination lock is embedded, you don""t need a key itself. It is less possible that you forget to secure a firearm after you use it. However, it requires a lot of space within a firearm. Any kind of handgun type firearms is designed very tightly and functionally. They do not have any room to embed an additional locking device such as a combination lock. Therefore, an embedded locking device requires major design change of a firearm. There are two problems. One is that you cannot install an embedded locking device in a current handgun as it is. An embedded locking device is not applicable to any current handguns. There are already a large number of handguns in the society which impose a large risk to the society. An embedded type firearm locking device cannot solve this issue. The other problem, which is much more critical, is that an embedded locking device is not practicable even for a newly designed handguns. An embedded locking device causes a very strong space conflict with other major components of a handgun and thereby destroy the best balance of a handgun. The best balance of a handgun is very important because if it is lost shooting rate must be deteriorated. This is one of the main reasons why there is no embedded locking device used actually for handgun design. There are many patent figures which disclose concepts of embedded firearm locking devices. However, none of them are drawn correctly in scale. They are drawn as if a handgun still kept the original proportion and balance although an embedded locking device is embedded in the body of a handgun. This does not lose the feasibility of the patents as a concept. However, no gun makers adopt them for actual handgun design because they are not feasible in reality if the original proportion and the best balance of a handgun are kept. For example, in the case of pistols, most concepts embed a combination lock into a grip. However, there must be a certain space in a grip for a magazine. Therefore, if a combination lock is embedded in a grip, the size of a grip must be enlarged. As a result, one cannot hold the pistol with the original best balance and get worse shooting rate. Another embedded firearm locking device patent was issued to Granaroli on Oct. 3, 2000 as U.S. Pat. No. 6,125,568. This former example embeds a combination lock into a frame of a pistol at the upper portion of a trigger guard. However, there is a recoil spring assembly in that portion of a frame. In order to avoid the conflict between a combination lock and a recoil spring assembly, you need to increase the height of a frame. The patent figure was drawn out of scale. The figure is depressed in the height direction. The diameter of the barrel is unreasonably too small and the front surface of the frame is drawn as a square which must be rectangular in reality. As a matter of fact, the embedded combination lock must increase the height of the pistol. Height increase makes a gun unstable. As a result, you lose the best balance of a pistol and get wore shooting rate.
Yet another U.S. Pat. No. 5,782,029 was issued to Brooks on Jul. 21, 1998. This former example embeds a combination lock at the bottom of a magazine. This is to prohibit unauthorized withdrawal of the magazine. However, if it is already loaded you cannot prohibit unauthorized firing. You can never prevent this type of unauthorized firing of a pistol if the magazine is already loaded. In order to avoid this risk, you need to keep the pistol unloaded whenever you lock the magazine. Therefor, you always need to load the pistol again whenever you unlock the magazine. This means that you cannot use the pistol as soon as possible after unlocking the magazine. You cannot keep the pistol standby position safely with the magazine lock. Moreover, the magazine itself is detachable if the lock is released. And you can easily replace the magazine with a conventional one. Another type of this locking magazine has a concept to prohibit the movement of a trigger. However, this concept requires a certain increase of size of a magazine. This also results in a larger grip size and losing the best balance of the pistol.
The present invention describes a secured firearm, including semi-automatic pistols and revolvers, which has a permanently mounted locking device in front of a trigger guard and under a barrel, whereby the locking device restricts the movement of a slide or a cylinder, thereby disabling the secured firearm. The locking device is attached to the outside of the secured firearm. Therefor, the impact on the inside of the secured firearm can be minimized. Any kind of lock can be used as the locking device as long as it is compact enough to be installed in the housing of the locking device. For example, a key lock, a combination lock, an electric lock, and a biometric lock such as fingerprint authentication are all applicable to the locking device.
A primary object of the present invention is to provide a secured firearm which has a permanently mounted locking device nevertheless without losing the best balance of a firearm.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a secured firearm having a locking device which is applicable to current handguns without major design change.
Yet another object of the present invention is to provide a secured firearm having a locking device which does not require removal of itself for the use of a firearm.
Yet another object of the present invention is to provide a secured firearm having a locking device which does not require any access to a trigger nor a hammer and has no risk increase of accidental firing due to mishandling of the locking device.
The present invention overcomes the shortcomings of the prior art by providing a firearm with a locking device that can be permanently mounted on a frame without losing the best balance of a firearm nor requiring major design change inside of a firearm.